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Wednesday Linkdump

We’re starting a new concept: Every Wednesday we’ll post a list of links to various items of interest relating to Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Faith. If you have a link you’re not a registered contributor and would like to contribute a link, feel free to post it in the comments section.

Brandon’s links:

Songs of the Dying Earth: A new book was released over the weekend, edited by Martin and Dozois. It is a collection of stories honoring Jack Vance, the finest author in the world of Science Fiction.

Culture isn’t Uniform: A useful article about culture and the need for variance in your writing. It’s hard to write about cultures outside of your own, but very worth the time to work on it. Vance was a master of this, but only because he had spent so much time traveling the world in the Merchant Marines. How can you learn more about other cultures and use that to grow your writing?

Converted Bookstores: Used books are cool. Used buildings can be cool, if you use them right. Combining used books and used buildings to make really cool bookstores is… really cool…

SciFi TV News worth knowing: If you’re a follower of Fringe, you’ll be delighted at some of the news in the article. Other shows mentioned are Walking Dead, Smallville, Dr. Who…

Write What You Know?: The oft quoted piece of advice gets some treatment from Sci-Fi authors in this article. Take it into consideration.

Scenes for Inspiration: Here’s a collection of cool digital art that may provide some inspiration for a science fiction story. If you’re looking for a picture to get you started, here’s a good place to look.

Luke’s links:

Facebook threatens the future of the internet: An expert claims that the internet is becoming fragmentary. Taken to the extreme, this creates islands of people, cultures, and communities that exist only in cyberspace and are alienated from each other… Sounds a bit like the direction we’re going. Certainly fertile ground for the sci-fi writer.

Google is making language translation phones: Unfortunately, I can’t determine from the article if it’s simply “word by word” or takes things like syntax and idioms into account. Either way, I don’t see this actually fixing the curse of Babel since, you know, God’s commands tend to trump human ingenuity.

Dreadstar: Over at Comic Book Resources they’re doing something called “Dreadstar December,” going through the amazing sci-fi comic saga, one issue a day. Full story synopses and commentary in bite-size chunks, perfect to whet the appetite or, like me, to help one reminisce. I need to steal those books from my dad…